← Fame through time1840-1849
The 1840s
Whose names filled the books of the 1840s - anyone at all, however long dead - counted as mentions per million words printed, so a period that simply published more does not inflate anyone.
Talked about then
Whose names appeared most in English books during the 1840s, whenever they lived.
- 1
Jesus110 - 2
Augustus14 - 3
Cicero12 - 4
Homer12 - 5
Plato9.9 - 6
Aristotle9.1 - 7
Virgil7.6 - 8
Herodotus7.1 - 9
Robert Peel7.1 - 10
Socrates6.5 - 11
Plutarch5.7 - 12
John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford4.8 - 13
Strabo4.8 - 14
Charlemagne4.8 - 15
Origen4.5 - 16
Livy4.2 - 17
Tertullian4.2 - 18
Demosthenes3.7 - 19
Walter Scott3.6 - 20
Ovid3.3 - 21
Bede3.3 - 22
Xenophon3.0 - 23
Lord Byron2.9 - 24
James II, Count of Urgell2.8 - 25
Henry VII, Holy Roman Emperor2.7 - 26
Otho2.7 - 27
John the Baptist2.7 - 28
Cleopatra2.7 - 29
Pericles2.6 - 30
Thucydides2.4 - 31
Trajan2.3 - 32
Euclid2.3 - 33
Solon2.3 - 34
Pythagoras2.0 - 35
Julius Caesar1.9 - 36
Galen1.9 - 37
Richard II1.9 - 38
Irenaeus1.9 - 39
William Henry1.8 - 40
Euripides1.8 - 41
Sophocles1.8 - 42
Hippocrates1.8 - 43
Ben Jonson1.8 - 44
Vespasian1.8 - 45
Horace Walpole1.7 - 46
John Bull1.7 - 47
Alexander the Great1.7 - 48
John Smith1.7 - 49
Aristophanes1.7 - 50
Pindar1.7 - 51
Polybius1.7 - 52
Hadrian1.6 - 53
Oliver Cromwell1.6 - 54
Ahab1.6 - 55
Robert Walpole1.5 - 56
Adam Smith1.5 - 57
William Penn1.5 - 58
William the Conqueror1.5 - 59
Alcibiades1.4 - 60
Thomas More1.4 - 61
Theodoret1.3 - 62
Domitian1.3 - 63
Hesiod1.3 - 64
Archimedes1.3 - 65
Lucan1.3 - 66
Suetonius1.3 - 67
Appian1.3 - 68
Isaac Newton1.3 - 69
Themistocles1.2 - 70
Sallust1.2 - 71
Catiline1.2 - 72
John Adams1.2 - 73
William Jones1.2 - 74
Hosea1.2 - 75
Saladin1.2 - 76
Diocletian1.2 - 77
Prince George, Duke of Cumberland1.1 - 78
Thomas Smith1.1 - 79
Richard III1.1 - 80
Rembrandt1.1 - 81
Edward the Confessor1.1 - 82
Caligula1.1 - 83
Arrian1.1 - 84
Vitruvius1.1 - 85
Arius1.1 - 86
Epicurus1.1 - 87
Phidias1.1 - 88
Anne Boleyn1.0 - 89
Walter Raleigh1.0 - 90
Belisarius1.0 - 91
Gratian1.0 - 92
John Wesley1.0 - 93
Joshua Reynolds1.00 - 94
Justin Martyr0.99 - 95
Saint George0.99 - 96
Plautus0.97 - 97
Aurelian0.94 - 98
Croesus0.94 - 99
Lucretius0.93 - 100
John Quincy Adams0.92
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 1840s, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Abraham Lincoln22 decades - 2
Edgar Allan Poe17 decades - 3
Charles Dickens20 decades - 4
Charles Darwin21 decades - 5
Frédéric Chopin16 decades - 6
Richard Wagner19 decades - 7
Hans Christian Andersen18 decades - 8
Andrew Johnson22 decades - 9
Nikolai Gogol19 decades - 10
Napoleon III21 decades - 11
Pope Leo XIII15 decades - 12
Søren Kierkegaard3 decades - 13
Emily Brontë14 decades - 14
Giuseppe Garibaldi11 decades - 15
Joseph Smith22 decades - 16
Mikhail Lermontov15 decades - 17
Robert E. Lee16 decades - 18
Giuseppe Verdi18 decades - 19
Franz Liszt19 decades - 20
John Stuart Mill18 decades - 21
Felix Mendelssohn18 decades - 22
P. T. Barnum17 decades - 23
Robert Schumann19 decades - 24
Jefferson Davis20 decades - 25
Taras Shevchenko13 decades
How to read these rankings
- Attention, not reputation. A place on these lists reflects the attention a person still draws in the public record. It is not a judgement on the life.
- Fame in print. The curves show how often a name appeared in the books of each decade from 1800 to 2019, drawn from the Google Books Ngram corpus.
- Gaps are left as gaps. Where the record is too thin to be fair, we would rather show nothing than guess.